Mike Carlton's 'On Air' 4

Great globs of bias and invention in the Murdoch gutter tradition...

"The Herald was getting twitchy. There was a snowstorm of letters to the editor from Jewish readers protesting furiously about the column, the headline and the Le Lievre cartoon. The cartoon drew the initial fire; a lot of people assumed I had drawn it, and written the headline as well. There were angry demands for me to be sacked. Dutifully, the editor published some of the more rational letters in the paper. Other people cancelled subscriptions. A number of Jewish-owned businesses withdrew their advertising... On the grapevine, I heard that directors on the Fairfax board were having their arms twisted and their ears bent, not least by the AIJAC. Many were receptive.

"On Monday, 4 August the editor-in-chief of the Herald, Darren Goodsir, publicly apologised for the cartoon. He also phoned to ask me to apologise to anyone I had offended. Reluctantly, I said I would consider it. The time bomb was ticking.

"Unsurprisingly, it exploded in the Murdoch press, led by the Australian and the Daily Telegraph. I had been on their notorious 'shit list' for years. The Australian had managed to get hold of the tweets and a lot of the emails I had sent to my attackers. The tweets were available for all to see, but the emails were not and obviously had been forwarded to the paper in a bunch. By whom? Your guess is as good as mine. The next day they were splashed in a long front-page story. It was heaven on a stick for the Murdochracy. There were two big birds to kill with one stone: the hated Fairfax press in general, and me in particular. Away they went. 'Fairfax Media is under pressure to sack columnist Mike Carlton, who has been ordered to apologise for using anti-Semitic and abusive language towards readers,' it began. On and on it went, a poisonous cocktail of a few facts heavily larded with great globs of bias and invention in the Murdoch gutter tradition. With malicious dishonesty, the paper mentioned not once the torrent of Jewish hatred which had prompted my response. There was not a syllable of the Nazi smear, the 'Hitler's bitch' stuff. The impression given - deliberately - was that I had exploded with rage at polite, reasoned criticism.

"I believe the Telegraph was even more vile in its attack on me. I never bothered to read what it ran - not then, not since - but I was told it splashed all over the shop as well. Somebody showed me the artwork they had confected. Against the background of a bombed and burning village, my head had been wrapped in a keffiyeh, the chequered Arab scarf, then photo-shopped onto the stooped and evidently fleeing body of a man in burned and tattered clothing. Carlton's a terrorist, geddit?" (pp 511-12)

To be continued...

Another Zionist Attack on Australian Aid to Palestinians

You'll recall the case of World Vision's Gaza director Mohammed El-Halabi, seized by the Israelis in 2016 and falsely accused of diverting Australian aid money to Hamas, despite neither the Department of Foreign Affairs & Trade nor World Vision Australia finding any evidence for the accusation. (See my 23/3/17 post The Halabi Affair.) (And incidentally, here it is, June 2018, and, search as I may on the Internet, I can find no reference to what has happened to El-Halabi.)

Now, another Australian aid organisation, the ACTU's Union Aid Abroad - APHEDA, has come under attack by the usual suspects for the heinous crime of helping dispossessed and colonised Palestinians.

'Venomous' doesn't begin to describe Murdoch's Daily Telegraph. "TERROR EXCLUSIVE" shrieked its front page yesterday, "Audit into jihadi links to Aussie aid - GAZA DRIP." (That final shriek, btw, gets my nomination for any 'Lamest MSM Pun of the Year' competition currently in contemplation.)

That was followed by this opener from "national political editor," Sharri Markson:

"An urgent investigation is under way after revelations millions of taxpayer dollars are being funnelled to a Palestinian aid organisation in the Middle East that employed a leader of a terrorist group. The Daily Telegraph can today reveal the money web that sees cash move from the Department of Foreign Affairs & Trade through a Sydney-based charity to a Palestinian aid organisation which employed the leader of a vicious jihadi group known as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. The PFLP has masterminded plane hijackings and suicide bombings, and is on the official terror lists of the US, the European Union and Canada. In total, $21 million of DFAT funding has been given to a charity set up by the unions, Union Aid Abroad-APHEDA, which has funnelled millions through to the Ma'an Development Centre - whose project co-ordinator in Gaza was the recently killed PFLP leader Ahmed Abdullah Al Adine. He was hailed a martyr at his funeral, which was guarded by at least a dozen PFLP terrorists. Foreign Affairs Minister Julie Bishop last night said a 'full audit of funding' to Union Aid Abroad had been ordered."

Describing the Marxist PFLP* as "a vicious jihadi group" is just the kind of cheap propaganda you'd expect from Markson, once described by former Labor politician, now Murdoch columnist for The Australian, Graham Richardson (in a model of understatement) as someone who can be "irritating and sometimes go too far."

Two things should always be kept in mind whenever Israelis, or their fifth columnists in places like Australia, start banging on about 'Palestinian terrorism'. 

The first is that the Palestinians, like all occupied people, have the legal right, in the words of UNGA resolution 37/43 of 1982, to resist occupying forces "by all available means, including armed struggle." 

The second is that for Zionists to bleat about 'Palestinian terrorism' is the very height of hypocrisy. Not only did they use terror in their ruthless, armed takeover of British Mandate Palestine, but they have continued using it on a daily basis against defenceless Palestinians and others ever since.

The Israelis have, of course, long been gunning for both APHEDA and World Vision Australia, as this propaganda piece from Jason Edelstein of NGO Monitor, published in Murdoch's Australian in 2012, indicates:

"In a new report, Shurat HaDin (Israel Law Centre) presents 'conclusive evidence' that a Gaza-based organisation supported by two Australian groups is linked to the Popular Front for the liberation of Palestine terror group. The report explains that the Australian Agency for International Development and World Vision Australia are 'providing financial aid and other forms of material support to the Union of Agricultural Work Committees, an agency of the proscribed terror organisation the PFLP... As NGO Monitor has shown, APHEDA... engages in activities that fuel the conflict and do not promote humanitarian objectives. APHEDA campaigns for a one-sided and immoral arms embargo that would impair Israeli defence against terror attacks, uses demonising 'apartheid' language, endorses the so-called Palestinian 'right of return' and partners with organisations promoting BDS and 'lawfare' tactics. Its Middle East tours have served as the basis for promoting BDS campaigns in Australia." (No peace in hidden agenda of aid agencies, 30/3/12)

[*For George Habash and the PFLP see my 6/5/18 post Gideon Levy: 'Habash Was Right'.]

A Post-Rambam Hatchet Job for Israel

Just one passage from Ben English's post-rambam hatchet job for Israel in last Saturday's Daily Terrorgraph suffices as a reminder of why you wouldn't touch the Terri even with the proverbial barge pole:

"Down the road from Bethlehem, patriotic murals adorn the 8m walls that tower over sections of the West Bank, celebrating yet more soldier 'martyrs' of the cause. Blood is the dominant motif, the blood of the enemy and martyr flowing together without a trace of irony. Listen to the spokesmen for Palestine and the language is equally stark. The barrier is branded the 'apartheid' wall, a prison that cuts them off from their true homeland to the east - the Palestine that was 'theirs' until statehood for Israel was decided in 1948." (Parallels of hate never meet, 28/11/15)

A mere four sentences to be sure, but what a surfeit of scribbling idiocy!

"Blood is the dominant motif."

Is it now? What a surprise! With almost 100 civilian martyrs gunned down since October you were expecting, like, flowers?

Israeli and Palestinian blood "flowing together."

What? 50/50?

It probably wouldn't mean anything to English, but I think the rest of us have got what it takes upstairs to understand the Australian explorer Edward John Eyre's 1845 reflection on settlers, Aboriginals and bloodshed on the colonial frontier and extrapolate to Palestine today: "Could blood answer blood, perhaps for every drop of European's shed by natives, a torrent of theirs, by European hands, would crimson the earth."

So the language of Palestinian spokesmen is "stark," is it?

Well, it is a stark situation, isn't it?

Maybe, just maybe, the fact that Palestinians are being gunned down at a rate of knots might have something to do with that.

English's Israeli PR interlocutors, of course, can come on all smooth and plausible because, really, they haven't a care in the world. All they have to do is feed fools like English bullshit and get paid for it. How hard must that be?

You see, life's sweet when you're a seasoned performer and you've got know-nothing foreign journalists and politicians hanging on your every word. When you're not dodging bullets. When your kids aren't being ripped out of their beds at 2 in the morning and carted away to be tortured. When your home isn't going to be bulldozed or burnt down by settler fanatics while you're still inside trying to sleep.

And those Palestinian "spokesmen" got it all wrong when they called the Apartheid Wall not only an Apartheid Wall but also a prison, did they?

I guess Ronnie Kasrils, a South African Jew who fought apartheid and calls Israel's West Bank Apartheid Wall "an apartheid wall of dispossession and a prison by any name" also got it wrong. But, hey, what would he know?

Now I take it that, by "their true homeland to the east," English means Israel.

I hate to tell him this, but Israel's actually to the west.

Anyway, if his geography's shit, his history's even worse, because, in point of fact, every inch of historic Palestine, from the River to the Sea, is the Palestinian's homeland - in exactly the same way as every inch of Australia is Aboriginaland.

The stark reality is that the Palestinian spokesmen's families were ethnically cleansed from Jaffa or Haifa or Lydda or any one of hundreds of other Palestinian towns and villages by Zionist terror gangs in 1948. That crime against humanity, the Palestinian Nakba, was unacceptable then, and it's just as unacceptable now. That Israeli Jews have profited from the crime and continue to do so (most refusing even to acknowledge the fact), changes nothing. The homes, lands, and possessions stolen by Israel from those driven out in 1948 still belong to the descendants of those Palestinian refugees, many of whom are still refugees whether in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, Lebanon, Syria or Jordan. There is no use-by date on human rights.

And in what parallel universe does the mere proclamation of a state in someone else's country confer legitimacy on that state and put an end to the matter?

Australia's Answer to Winston Churchill

The world is teetering on the brink of Islamogeddon. Assailed by the Muslim hordes. Desperate for real leadership. Where, I hear you ask, is the mighty Winston when we need him?

Fear no more. One such has arisen - here in Australia!

Tony Abbott? No way!

Check out Col of Port Macquarie as he holds forth from a barstool in his fave pub:

"We in free democracies need much more urgent action than mega street rallies against an Islamic minority of extremists. They are now emboldened by our weak response to their atrocities and provocations. We need a collective response from free nations to swat these extremists - immediately. A multinational force in overwhelming numbers in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and northern Africa needs to be deployed, now. Yes, there will be many deaths and injuries, but that is the price for defending democracy, our freedoms, and our system of justice. The forces of evil have surfaced many times in the history of mankind, notably when Adolf Hitler annexed much of Europe before the forces of good took action. We must never let evil prevail. It's now time for leaders of free nations to 'man up'. (Letter, Colin, Daily Telegraph, 15/1/15)

Simple Simon, Again

Daily Terrorgraph journalist Simon Benson last came to my notice with a series of blatant propaganda pieces for Israel in 2012. (Click on the 'SB' label below and be amazed at what a little rambamming can do.)

Just to remind you, here's Benson back then:

"The difference is that one side fires indiscriminate rockets into civilian populations with the express intent on terrorising people or killing them. The other side seeks to defend itself and makes mistakes and kills innocent civilians." (See my 8/12/12 post Innocents Abroad.)

Now he's come up with this little gem in an admiring opinion piece on Tone's "tough stance against Russia":

"The last time the Australian Defence Force was deployed to a conflict that involved the West taking on Russia was World War 1." (Muscling up as a mid power, Daily Telegraph, 5/9/14)

That's right folks - Russia! And all this time you thought we'd been fighting the Germans.

News Ltd's Pro-Palestinian Saboteur Strikes Again

The nameless pro-Palestinian saboteur, who has heroically taken it upon himself to subvert the dominant 'Israel First' paradigm that rules the roost at Murdoch's News Ltd, has struck again, this time in the pages of yesterday's Daily Telegraph.

His handiwork was clearly evident in the graphic which accompanied Simple Simon Benson's latest advertisement for SUFFERING Israel:

LIFE GOES ON AS THE ROCKETS RAIN DOWN shouted the banner headline superimposed on a photograph of a Palestinian rocket emerging from a Gazan city (L) and an Iron Dome rocket emerging from its launcher in Israel (R).

At the bottom of the two photos, blurred together to form one, was a red square and a yellow circle. The red circles contained the words Qassam Rocket, GAZA (L) and Iron Dome, ISRAEL (R). And in the yellow circles: 800+ Missiles launched from Gaza (L) and 85% Interception success rate (R). 

In keeping with the Left/Right juxtaposition, below this graphic, were block descriptions of how a Qassam and an Iron Dome work.

Accompanying the Qassam half, however, was a photograph.

A mean, nasty, smirking Qassam rocket? No way! A mean, nasty, smirking Qassam launch squad? Not on your nelly!

No - three Palestinian guys with - wait for it - slingshots! No kidding!

And the saboteur's bleeding obvious message? If truth be told, compared to Israel's bloated, US-supplied arsenals of shells, rockets and bombs (containing depleted uranium and who knows what else),  which receive practically no attention from the corporate media, those fearsome 'Palestinian rockets', with which the corporates are currently bombarding us, are little more than slingshots.

Not since our News Ltd saboteur slipped the headline Living under the cloud of Israel's cruel apartheid into the 5 May 2012 emission of The Australian, which caused much wailing and gnashing of teeth at the time, have we seen anything quite like this. (See my posts Consensus at Last... (7/5/12) and Down the Memory Hole (10/5/12).)

Where and when, I wonder, will News Ltd's brave pro-Palestinian saboteur strike next?